Remembering Eric Rickman

Eric Rickman Has Been There, Done That - And Shot the Pictures To Prove It!

Not many of us can lay claim to standing close enough to postwar roaring track roadsters to get covered in clay. So few participants of Bonneville’s first Speed Week survive, that the SCTA easily fit all of these ’49ers into a small group photo. Fifty-eight years after the Oakland Roadster Show opened, it’s rare to encounter someone who attended the first one. Fewer still traveled all the way to Mexico the following year to launch the La Carrera Panamericana series. Nearly no one still alive witnessed, in its rain-soaked entirety, the ’55 NHRA Nationals that opened in Kansas but closed in Arizona several weeks later. Only four creatures on the planet claim charter membership in the revolutionary Drag Safari, touring the country like missionaries, spreading the gospel according to Wally Parks: safe quarter-mile competition in standardized classes, sanctioned by the National Hot Rod Association.

You shouldn’t believe anyone who says he did all these things, unless you recognize the man featured here. When Eric Rickman tells you he got paid for witnessing more hot rod history than anyone alive, you can take his word for that, too. Not that “Rick” is likely to break out boasting; rather, this hero is content to let his photographs and awards speak for his motorsports contributions since 1947. Not even his neighbors seem aware of the historical significance of the old guy who drives the oldest vehicle on the block (a late El Camino flying a crisp American flag).

Ah, that trophy collection: an Indian statue identical to those awarded class winners in the Mexican road races of 1951-’55; a personalized belt buckle from the Northern California Roadster Racing Association, circa 1948-’49; plaques, cups, and dishes recognizing inductions into more halls of fame than you ever knew existed. Can you name anyone else who has received the highest honors bestowed by organizations sanctioning off-road vehicles, offshore boats, car shows, dry lakes racing, hot rods, motorcycles, and customs? We can’t.

Most significant are the thousands of published photographs credited to E. Rick Mann during a career spanning six decades. For both quantity and quality, no other visual record of the infancies of hot rodding, drag racing, and the hot rod media compares. Often, his medium-format negatives are the only documentation of some historic event, vehicle, or person. Sometimes, a surviving image is the only one he bothered to expose-the stuff of legend around Petersen Publishing Co.’s photo lab.

“I learned to do that from Russ Reid, staff photographer for the Oakland Tribune,” Rick recalled recently. “Russ would let me ride around the city with him at night, with four shortwave radios going all at once. You want a course in photography? Ha! There was none of this ‘Hold-still-I-need-a-shot’ type of thing; it had to be in focus, the right exposure, and right now-in one shot. That’s what they nicknamed me at Petersen: One-Shot Rick.”

Given two days to warm up to an interrogator, Rick spilled such tales with the skill of a master storyteller-and the memory of a man half his age (90 in November). The following are as many of his own words as we could squeeze onto so few pages, accompanied by classic photographs either of or by Eric Rickman, a hot rod hero and dear friend of HOT ROD staffers since 1950.

MOUNTAIN MAN (1963, BONNEVILLE) “I spent so much time in Wendover, I became an honorary citizen. Besides every Speed Week since the first one [1949], I covered private runs by Breedlove and Arfons and Mickey Thompson. After one of them would break something and be waiting for the replacement part, it was cheaper to just leave me there for a few days than to have me come all the way back when they were ready to run again. I’d load my dirt bike in my truck and go up into those hills in my spare time. To this day, you can still find seashells way up there, because nothing has disturbed them since this whole place was under water.

MADE IN JAPAN (late ’40s)”My secret weapon was this machine gun camera, captured from the Japanese. The owner of Dana Photo, a retired Army officer who liked to be called Colonel Benjamin, came up with that in its original box, complete with everything. The Japanese used these high-speed cameras to train pilots. It was mounted in the back end of a plane, aimed at a trailing plane. It shot about 140 photos in 40 seconds! In between each frame was a stopwatch. They’d synchronize the stopwatches so they could see which pilot shot the other guy down first. They’d play the film back on a projector to score the pilots. You’d thread the 35mm film just like movie film, into a cassette, then wind up a big spring. Hold that trigger down and you’d go through a hundred frames so fast you couldn’t take a deep breath. This is the camera I used to capture what might’ve been the first crash sequence ever published. Life magazine printed 10 frames of a five-car pileup. Unfortunately, it ran without a byline, and I never got paid. I’d given the negs to a photographer friend at the Oakland Tribune to help promote an upcoming event for the roadster club. Someone at the paper put it on the Associated Press wire, and Life picked it up. Bob McCoy later did a painting that I believe was inspired by that published sequence. There are 12 negatives in all, but I can’t find any of them.”

THE FIRST SPEED WEEK (1949)”I’d been looking at HOT ROD all along, so I knew that the dry lakes racers were going to Bonneville. I was talking about this one day to a young customer at Dana Photo. He was interested in cars, and he was also a pilot. He said he could put in for an airplane for that weekend. Three o’clock in the morning, we leave Oakland. It was darker than the inside of a cat, and he had no navigation. We discovered little red beacons going east, so we decided to fly from beacon to beacon to beacon. That was fine-until the sun came up and they turned off the beacons! We were out in the middle of Nevada, and that’s all we knew. So, we see a highway and come down real low and slow, reading the street signs to see where the hell we are. By this time, our gas is getting low, so we land right down the middle of Highway 80 and pull up to a gas station. We pour in 5 gallons of automobile gasoline, take off into the sunrise, fly into Wendover, and land on the Salt. SCTA later made me an official ’49er because I covered the first one. I was going just for kicks and look what happened!”

WORKING THE CORNERS (Early ’50s)”This is too close! I couldn’t tell you where it was because I covered so many races. I became aware of roadster racing at Oakland Speedway when I went to work for Hubbard Automotive, right after getting out of the Navy. I steamed old engines and took ’em apart for rebuilding. I wanted some extra money, so I started processing film for Dana Photo, which had first-class, Speed Graphic camera equipment. The owner was kind enough to let me use it at the races, and the racers would buy my prints. This is 1947, so I got in on the ground floor. I shot at half a dozen tracks: stock cars, jalopies, midgets, anything that had wheels and raced. They even ran indoors, at the Oakland Armory, on the concrete floor. I hit all these tracks every weekend. I was single. You might say I chased everything that was fast-including women.”

HOT ROD’S FIRST PHOTO LAB (1950)”When I moved down to L.A. to work for Robert E. Petersen, he gave me a broom closet that I had to make over into the company’s first photo lab. I also ran a small press for Pete, printing subscription forms and promotional stuff. I always liked darkroom work, but the lab job eventually went to Bob D’Olivo. Pete said, ‘We want you on the outside.’ What’re you gonna say?”

SUICIDAL SHOP TRUCK (early ’50s)”This was Petersen’s pickup. It was fast, but it had mechanical brakes. I damn near killed myself! Fortunately, somebody stole it and saved my life. I was glad to be clear of that baby.”

“Here’s the same panel truck (background) in Wendover [1954]. After the towing accident, Barris hammered it out, filled it with Bondo, and sprayed it. It was repainted two or three times over the years. It was our general truck for towing things around and hauling stuff. You can tell this is a long time ago because there’s no club graffiti on the rocks behind the motel.”

TOUGH TRUCK (Mid-’50s)”Bud Coons and I were heading north from L.A. to the Oakland Roadster Show. Going up the old Grapevine road was fine, but coming back down, the trailer got sideways and went off the road. Its right-rear wheel dug in and rolled the truck. The trailer tore loose and slid right up to it. Boy, does it ever get noisy when that sheetmetal starts sliding in gravel! I’m driving, so I land on top. Coonsey’s got a girlfriend along with us. She flies up into the rear-view mirror and cuts her ear. She’s bleeding like a stuck pig, and Coonsey’s pinned down underneath her, with blood dripping onto him. It was a mess and a half. One rim was bent, so I hitchhiked down the road to a gas station, got a tow truck, and put the spare wheel on. We hooked it up to the trailer and kept on going. That motorcycle cop stopped, got off his bike, walked over, laughed, got back on his bike, and rode away! Nobody else even stopped.”

OH, CRAPS! (Early/Mid-’50s, MEXICO)”You think my camera wasn’t sharp? Look, you can read the dice! We’re shooting craps on the floor of the press plane provided by the Mexican version of AAA. I’d shoot the start of the race, then fly down to one of the pit stops, then fly down to wherever the race was ending that day. Of course, they had parties at every finish. We had a lot of fun. The only guys I still recognize are Bob Russo [in dark sombrero, right], Pete Petersen [wearing light hat, with ribbons], and Chris Economaki [in black-rimmed glasses].”

HORSE OF IRON (1953/1954, MEXICO)”Caballo de Hierro was a real hot rod, sponsored by HOT ROD: a ’27 T on a ’50 Ford frame with Oldsmobile power. Ak Miller was the driver. Doug Harrison was copilot. Ak was a fantastic guy, a real hero. This thing surprised lots of high-dollar European sports cars in two La Carrera Panamericana open-road races. It was the only American car to finish in its class both years. There were wild parties every night. The funny thing was, all the drivers were worn out and went to bed early, while the press people partied. I covered all five Mexican road races [1950-’54], but there is no truth to the rumor that those little kids (right) were fathered by me during the first one.”

ON SAFARI (1955)”Wally Parks was a character. He was a fantastic man, and he was such a pleasure to work for. He followed his star. I mean, that was it. Remember, he bucked half a dozen different outfits trying to start drag operations around the country, but he held fast. It was quite a thing. [Pictured left to right] Bud Coons was the square-jawed sheriff who ran the whole operation; Chic Cannon was tech inspector; Bud Evans, announcer. Coonsey talked into the microphone of a reel-to-reel tape recorder after each meet, making comments about the weekend. We’d ship the tape with my film back to Wally, who’d write a story and captions. Wally was running both HOT ROD and NHRA, so he sent me as HOT ROD’s representative. I had a salary, paid by Petersen. These poor bastards got room and board, but that was about all they got. I could eat steak; they had to eat hamburgers. It was really ridiculous, but NHRA didn’t have any money. I knew that as soon as I saw my first NHRA jacket. My name was embroidered over some stitching holes. If you looked close, they spelled out ‘W-A-L-L-Y’; he’d pulled the stitches out of it! He got Mobil Oil to pay for our fuel, so we always found a Mobil dealer. Remember when filling stations had water hoses at the ends of each island? One guy would get the hose at one end, the other at the other end, and have a water fight. Hey, we’re all piled in this station wagon, middle of summer, in the Midwest. We’d cool off, and the Mobil attendants would be glad to see us go.”

“Everything was crammed into that little trailer: Chrondek timing equipment, tables, PA speakers, and a quarter-mile of wire for timing and announcing on big reels. We’d set up on side roads, dirt roads, or whatever surface the local club could get. Abandoned emergency landing strips were best. Some of these towns never saw an airplane, but these military bases were sitting there, empty. The whole premise of this program was getting the kids off the street. If you’ve been reading the papers lately, they’ve been killing ’em left and right, street racing. It’s back to the same thing.”

MAN OF MANY COLORS (’50s)”I covered all of the major drag races and stock car races; sometimes for all three Petersen car magazines. I was officially HOT ROD’s staff photographer, but we were still a small outfit in the early ’50s. The drag race is the ’58 NHRA Nationals. I wore a lot of hats back then; a lot of shirts and hats!”

SHOOTING THE SPEEDWAY (’50s, INDIANAPOLIS 500)”I’m holding another rare World War II camera that came from Colonel Benjamin’s Oakland shop. It’s a Speed Graphic combat model with a wooden body and a door that swings up and shuts across the front of the lens. It was great at the racetrack, where all the dust and dirt were real hard on conventional cameras. The colonel had a lot of that military stuff. He also had Leicas that were captured in Germany; the original 35mm Leica cameras, packed in cases that had hardly been opened, with all the lenses!”

RICK’S LITTLE HELPERS (1957, NHRA NATIONALS)”I always had helpers. They’d hand stuff up to me and run errands. We always had volunteers; there was never any shortage, let me tell ya.”

SAVING STEVE MCQUEEN (1967, MEXICO)”I’d met McQueen up at Indian Dunes, where we tested new bikes for Motorcyclist. He’d show up on weekends with the kids and his wife, and I got to know him. Later on, he drove the Baja Boot, the off-road race car that Vic Hickey built for George Hurst. Before the big event, Steve went to Mexico for about a week of testing. Don Francisco had an airplane, so I flew down with him. We wound up following McQueen around. He’d get lost, so we’d drop him packages with notes about how to get himself back out. Steve was a pretty good driver, and Hickey was a real good mechanic. He built this thing all by himself.”

OUT ON THE SALT (1973) “Man, that Salt Flat is somethin’ else. When you’re standing out there and you feel static electricity making your hair stand up, it’s time to get inside somewhere, because the lightning bolts are on the way!”

STILL SHOOTING AT 70 (1988)”Tom Medley and I were both still with Petersen when he made this 70th birthday card for my coworkers to sign. I retired in 1992 after 42 years with the company. What a ride!”

AT HOME WITH THE MASTER (2008)Following four failed marriages, the wild man of the Drag Safari finally settled down with the love of his life, Virginia, in the late ’70s. The garage and spare bedroom of their hillside home in the L.A. suburbs are filled with trophies, awards, and a collection of racing belt buckles, this one (lower left) by the Northern California Roadster Racing Association-six decades ago!

RETURN OF THE DRAG/SAFETY SAFARI (2004)”Wally wanted the original Safari crew to help celebrate NHRA’s 50th U.S. Nationals, so all four of us went to Indy. We were treated like royalty all weekend. Even the fans made a fuss, asking for autographs and photos. I enjoyed everything except wearing that silly jumpsuit. As you can see, I’m still shooting photos, but not on film. Digital cameras are the hot setup!”